Duty
by plumpthighs
Summary: He would be alright, of course, but if he was left there, someone could take him, bury him, which was the stuff of nightmares for beings like them. Antonia was only doing her duty, one nation to another. Fem!Spain.


Antonia was not sure what had compelled her to follow the war so closely. It wasn't her own. She assumed it was divine intervention, because on the day she planned to find Lovino, offer him a friendly face and a comforting word or two, he had been shot and killed. Dragged to safety by fellow foot soldiers, and left alone once they had realised his condition, so they could help someone who was only wounded and had a chance of survival. Antonia had found him some time later, and was able to convince a few of the clean-up operation to carry him to somewhere with a free bed by playing his grief-stricken widow.

Very convincingly, if she said so herself. She had enjoyed the look of sympathetic despair on the soldier's faces when she had held his head on his neck – which was like a napkin, it was so flimsy and stained – and kissed his cold lips, holding his body tight against her and rocking him as she wept. He would be alright, of course, and if he was left there, someone could take him, bury him, which was the stuff of nightmares for beings like them. Antonia was only doing her duty, one nation to another.

Maybe not every single one of those tears had been faked, but she was a method actress at heart, and had accidentally forced herself to imagine him never waking up. And then forced herself to stop imagining that immediately. Once he was put to bed in a safe room in a nearby burnt-out hostel, she asked for medical supplies. Clearly, everyone thought she was insane – there were no civilians around, she had come out of nowhere, to pick up a dead man and nurse him back to health - but she undressed him from the waist up and extracted the bullet with still, practised hands, propping him up to wrap the bandages around his chest while the men looked at her warily and eventually left her to it. She was told repeatedly it was a lost cause, but thankfully, no one had the heart to make her stop trying.

Antonia was still eyeing the blood-stained rags in the corner when Lovino took the huge, gasping breath that meant his lungs had started to work again and began muttering to himself in his sleep. She despised blood. Once he was safe and cleaned, it was no longer his - just a stain on a piece of fabric, and she was repulsed by it.

She turned her head at feeling the clammy hand paw at her leg for attention, and smiled softly when she met his eyes, more confused than grateful. Lovino opened his mouth, but she put a finger under his chin and closed it again.

"I heard some nasty men were shooting at you today," she told him, stroking his hair from the sudden sweat on his forehead. His skin was still cold like ice; it was as if he was melting in the heat.

Lovino closed his eyes and opened his mouth again, able to croak bitterly, "… one of them got me."

She smiled encouragingly at him when he blinked up at her again, pulling himself awake. "I can see that…" she replied, amused by his effort until he tried to sit up on his own and she had to hurry to help him, feeling him shiver.

Antonia took his jacket from the wooden chair near the shutters, with the dark brown stain set and immortal on the front, and pulled it carefully over his shoulders. "I worry about you out there," she told him, and her voice was soft, but sharpish and tutting, like a mother, as if it were all somehow Lovino's fault. "You're not a soldier, are you?"

Lovino immediately scowled, about to pluck at his stained, torn uniform jacket and ask, 'what the fuck do you think this is, my pyjamas?', but that would have been too harsh to the poor woman. She was doing her best. "I am, actually," he answered. There was no hiding the edge of disdain.

"Oh, no," Antonia tried to clarify quickly, with a nervous little smile, showing her teeth. "You are, you are and I'm very proud, but you're just not… the kind of man to pick a fight…"

"_You_ would think that," he scoffed, taking the glass of water from her hand and sipping at it. The first trickle was ambrosia, so he lost his manner and almost downed it in one chug. Antonia rubbed his shoulder and he obediently paced himself.

"Why me, specifically?" She asked, trailing her hand down Lovino's arm to squeeze his wrist comfortingly, shaking her head at him. He was such a strange man. He had denied having goodness so often that he had come to believe his own lies. He didn't answer, so she smiled encouragingly. "Lovino?" She prompted.

She had always been so damn nosy. He shrugged, finishing his drink and having to take a second to breathe. "I'm nice to you," he admitted, looking back down to his lap, and then to her hand on his wrist.

She laughed lightly and his ears blazed up.

"This is you being nice?" She asked, and he tensed, frowning and looking to the opposite wall. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry… you just have that little scowl on your face all the time…" Antonia leant forward to try to meet his eye, the loose curls of escaped hair falling around her face. She felt the muscles tighten in his arm as he prepared to move it from her touch.

"So am I special?" She asked quietly, which made him stop and let her hand linger. With her head close to his, she could almost feel the heat from his ears and his cheeks, if she wanted she could have inched forward and her lips would have touched the faint stubble on the skin where his jaw met his neck.

But she didn't. She would never. Antonia loved him so dearly, she knew every little bruise and scar of him, physically and mentally. At least, she always told herself she did, and then found something new in him, or something she had not seen in a long time and simply forgotten was there. Even more remarkable was that Lovino didn't seem to have any issue with her being so familiar. When he pushed so many away, being as close as she was allowed was not easily sacrificed for the comfort of a kiss, which could either break them now, if he reacted badly, or stew over to genuine romance. Genuine affection was already there between them; Antonia would not only love him, but fall in love with him, and sooner or later, it would ruin them both. She would lose him, again, because he insisted on fighting, when it was not in his nature. Not to mortality, but to some cause or another, she would lose him.

In which case, it was better to see him do so of his own volition and without regret. She didn't want to be the person who told him what he couldn't do.

"You're the only one who came looking for me," he muttered, and she knew that he had felt embarrassed, because to show her how grateful he was, rather than tell her, he slid his hand back until hers was no longer on his wrist, but nestled between his fingers.

Not that it meant anything other than gratitude. He had held her hand a thousand times before.

She gave a little smile and squeezed back, almost wishing she hadn't. His skin was still cold, but clammy, and when she looked up at his eyes they were deep and trusting and afraid. Not like they used to be afraid - the fear was tucked away, deep behind a lot of hot air and big talk. He couldn't show just anyone how scared he was anymore. Antonia couldn't help him without letting him know that it was very clear anyway, and she couldn't baby him how and when she pleased. He was a grown man. The same Lovino, so wonderfully complicated, but matured until he was, to the untrained eye, a seemingly open book.

Speaking of eyes, she realised she hadn't looked away from his and smiled anxiously, taking the closest rag and lifting it to his forehead for an excuse. When she leant forward to his face, she felt him lean forward to meet her, and he set his lips on hers.

The kiss was forceful and determined, but it twitched at the thought of the consequences. Cold, harsh, even, but with a burning warmth behind it. It was, in its entirety, Lovino.

He took a few seconds to realise she wasn't kissing him back, but the reaction was spring-loaded. They were back as they were before almost immediately, Lovino on the bed with his head lowered, Antonia blinking at him and wondering. He glanced at her and swallowed, about to explain himself.

"… you have a cut," she whispered, to save him the embarrassment. "I was just going to clean it." She raised a hand tentatively to show him, and he found there was the prickling ache of a little wound when she put pressure onto his skin, so she was telling the truth, but she wasn't paying attention to her work. Antonia's hands started to slip from his head to his cheeks, which were an odd, lukewarm pink on his sickly skin, and brought his face forward for their lips to meet again.

He was so cold, barely alive, and she shuddered and held him tighter, so frustrated from all her stupid excuses and all the wasted time she had spent insisting that they would never be so close. Lovino's freezing fingers found the small of her back and held her steady, then safe and tight when she pulled away. At first, the feeling of him starting to warm in her arms was comforting. But he was quiet, and she realised that it wasn't entirely for her benefit.

"Lovino…" she whispered, and he shook his head and gripped her tightly. It was the closest to 'shut up' that he had ever given her, but she could feel herself pressed too firmly against his chest and forced herself away. He groaned, exhausted again and desperate, but she took control.

Antonia set him back carefully until he was lying flat, inappropriately beaming when his hand shot up to hold hers again. "I'll be here," she promised, laughing at him a little. He nodded against his fatigue, quickly finding it too difficult to even keep his eyes open anymore. She slipped the jacket from under him and brought the sheets up to his chin instead, trying to keep some of his new warmth safe while he slept.


End file.
